


mama, we all go to hell (do you see what you've done?)

by KilltheDJ



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Implied/Referenced Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:14:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26637925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KilltheDJ/pseuds/KilltheDJ
Summary: The Phoenix Witch watches over more than the Zones give her credit for, and she's seen it all. From the childhoods of her children to the formation of a new age... She's seen it, watched them live it.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 16





	mama, we all go to hell (do you see what you've done?)

**Author's Note:**

> yes i absolutely mangled the lyrics to mama for the title but it sounded good in my head okay <3 ANYWAY ! enjoy ur daily dose of the phoenix witch being ghoul's mom. and, uh, tw for death, y'all. canon-typical death anyway.

The spilled blood along sand-stained roads was nothing more than a tradition, a history, a world built on the ruins of another with life that refused to stand down. 

_ Stay down,  _ the desert whispered, the very sky shaking as the world stopped spinning, to lean in, to whisper, to tell them,  _ stay down.  _

The bombs of the Analog Wars had made their hellscape, and that should have been the end of it. But beauty was made out of destruction, and blood is color, and color will always be a part of them, part of the  _ humanity  _ that painted the sky in a technicolor dream every night. 

They never stayed down, the Phoenix Witch mused. The humans. They refused death like one refused a gift. Gentle, but firm, grinning down a deity with blood dripping from their hearts. 

She used to be one, you know. She wasn’t around for the Analog Wars, for the Helium Wars, for the bombing of Zone Seven. She’d become a deity long after the Zones had made themselves, and still, she was beginning to forget why they always  _ fought  _ like animals to stay alive. 

She’d met many ‘joys, passing through, from life to death, but often she wondered how many she’d taken and how many had weaseled their way out of her grasp with wide-eyes and electricity under their veins rushing like blood. 

They never  _ stayed down.  _

She hadn’t, either, not even when she was supposed to. Unfortunately, it seemed like a family trait. 

The Phoenix Witch, contrary to popular belief, did have a family - at least, she used to. It’s hard to remember what it was like, living life with two little children and a wife, because they aren’t children anymore and her wife is eternally asleep in the body of a famed robot, but she used to do it every day. 

No matter how much her power took from her, she would never forget the way she’d felt when she died, before she realized she was going to become a goddess. She’d felt  _ electric,  _ like there was nothing more she’d rather do than cheat death, because she had two fucking kids who needed her. 

In a stellar turn of events, she didn’t get the chance. 

She wondered, really, what would’ve happened if she had stayed, if she had become the mother she was supposed to be, if her children grew up with a crow’s eye to watch their back rather than a Mailbox to send their grief to. 

Instead, she watched them grow, watched them become killjoys, the type that never stayed down, that partied hard and fast and never stopped, not for a moment, because a moment let the illusion shatter and the truth sank in. 

_ NewAGoGo,  _ her eldest daughter went by; grew up bouncing from place to place with a target on her back and sticky fingers. 

It was interesting, if the Witch had to say; her daughter hadn’t had ice blue eyes when she was born. Only she herself had, an ice blue set deep into her irises like electricity, like the same spark that sustained the desert. 

If she was any less observant, she would assume it meant NewsAGoGo was to be the next Witch, when she passed out, allowing the (current) Witch to rest, as the cycle went, if not for  _ Fun Ghoul,  _ her youngest son’s name, didn’t have the same color. 

They were powerful, the two of them, maybe even more so than her, if they were to learn how to harness it. 

But instead, they wandered around, living life in the fast lane, never looking back, never  _ able  _ to look back. 

For example, Fun Ghoul hadn’t been able to look back since he was five years old. She wasn’t the best at keeping time, not when unreality had set in, waiting for her to get sucked into the un-time that sustained her existence, but she always remembered, was always hyper aware, of her children. 

She remembered when it happened, when he’d run away from Dr. D’s - back when the man still had a good sense of humor - and got himself into more trouble than he’d bargained for.  _ Exterminator Ativan,  _ the Exterminator’s name was, a sick son of a bitch straight out of Bat City with an empty cave where her rib cage and heart was supposed to be. 

The Exterminator wanted to kill him. She’d wanted to, to fulfill her quota, and a child with so little meat on his bones the coyotes weren’t interested was an easy target. Ghoul hadn’t seen it coming, young and exhausted and not yet filled with that  _ spark,  _ the thing that would keep him alive through everything, through  _ anything.  _

The Phoenix Witch was still young, still blind to the ways of unreality, blind to the world as it was and the world she could make it. 

The most she could do was change the motivation, intention, the  _ I will…  _ Ativan was still something the Witch couldn’t control. A soldier with no mind other than hate was no human at all. All rigid lines and no color, no bleed through, no blood between themself and the grave. 

The scar on the side of his face was reminiscent of her mistake, of power misused, but it was better than a child’s grave, and perhaps it gave him that spark. 

After all, a killjoy was only born after they spat blood into the sand, when they realized they were doomed to be nameless ashes in the wind, and didn’t  _ care.  _ The Zones didn’t care about adult or child; didn’t care about the danger or the reward. 

The Zones were the Zones, sand and blood and motor oil made on the human need for neon and bass. Curiosity was what led to Pandora’s box being opened and rather than wrestle the monsters back into their box, they painted them, made them symbols. 

_ You can’t make us the same,  _ they said, with neon hair and jackets and frankly stupid names. She could say that, because she’d been one, and there was a reason crows were her patrons, her companions. 

It was no surprise it was her son that rose to fame, a crooked grin and an explosive talent bringing him straight to the heart of the war they’d been waging for a century, the same  _ you will not control us  _ that had led history into no greater bloody battles. 

He was a spitfire, sure, a burning prince in a kingdom of abandoned hope, but it was NewsAGoGo, really, that solidified his fate, for better or worse. 

The Witch had watched in curiosity, watching, always watching, always looming at the edges to make sure nothing like Ativan crawled near her children again, but really, she should’ve seen it coming. 

The way NewsAGoGo spoke so highly of Cherri Cola, a radio poet with a particular nose for the unreality, for  _ her,  _ and the way Fun Ghoul spoke the same name with so much  _ disdain.  _

It was ironic, really, watching two worlds collide because of some poet who didn’t have his wits about him most of the time, unable to distinguish between what was real and what was the realm of the deities he so adored. And over a can of soda, true to the name, at that. 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” NewsAGoGo had hissed, black-polished nails gripping the can of soda that, ironically, Fun Ghoul was about to grab. 

A bomb might as well have gone off with how quickly they backed away from each other when they noticed the ice blue eyes staring back at them, a mirror of their own, a mirror of the power their suffering had granted them through the course of a generational duty. 

“Why - why are - “

They never finished that, neither of them. The Witch looming by, unable to speak to them directly, as they were too  _ alive  _ to see her (unlike the poet, of whom had been on the line between dead and alive since he was twelve, who always would be, whether come good or bad). 

Still, she made them  _ understand,  _ without words, without the need for voices, without the need for the all too human curiosity. 

_ You are.  _ Not  _ you are my children;  _ all the Witch made them understand was  _ you are.  _ They could finish the sentence themselves, but they  _ understood.  _

Fun Ghoul, if she remembered correctly, was thirteen at the time, while NewsAGoGo, the older sister to both Fun Ghoul and Cherri Cola at heart, was eighteen, coasting on the adrenaline of making it past her sixteenth birthday. 

A rare feat for a girl without a home, without a crew to watch her back. It was worth celebrating for years, the Witch supposed. She’d been overjoyed herself when NewsAGoGo had made it past the age of two. 

She wasn’t among the living when Fun Ghoul passed the same milestone.

After that, they had gone their separate ways, reminding the Witch of exactly what her job truly was; to watch over the Zones, to watch over the Killjoys and see to it that there weren’t any wandering souls trying to become  _ more.  _

It was interesting, really, watching the way they aged. Fun Ghoul became reckless, short-tempered and hiding a fragile heart after he passed the age of eleven. 

Newsagogo, on the other hand, at the same age, had begun realizing exactly what could get her carbons, what could keep her afloat; the Witch didn’t like to think about it, but it was amusing to watch a grand total of everyone she’d ever flirted with fall to her charm, only to get stabbed in the back before they could so much as make a degrading comment. 

It was no wonder NewsAGoGo went on to open up a club, skirting around the borders of Zone Five, shortly after meeting her brother. A mid-life crisis moment, if you will, considering the expected age of most Killjoys was, if you were lucky, in your mid-thirties and not your early twenties. 

Wasn’t it a shame they lived like a bomb on a timer? A fuse running short, the hero not in time,  _ bomb  _ goes everything they had left. The Zones would always go back to their origins - blood and color and  _ bombs.  _

That being said, it was no surprise that it was Fun Ghoul, shortly after meeting NewsAGoGo, that brought about that age once again. 

It started with nothing. It started with Fun Ghoul stumbling around the Zones half-out of his mind with ringing in the ears and blood trickling down the side of his face, though the Witch had done all she could to stop it from being fatal when she’d realized the impact of the detonation after a reaping in Zone Two. 

It wasn’t fatal, no, but it did result in quite a lot of hearing loss, and short-term memory loss, and, inadvertently, he couldn’t spell the word _ ghost  _ for four months afterward. Concussions were a tricky thing, especially when unreality meddled in them like she had. 

Guiding him to help was the easy part; sensing a kindred soul was easier than fixing him, telling him as best she could while he was on that border of life and death -  _ run, inferno, run. That way.  _

Call it an old joke between her and her wife, when they’d named him, before he’d been old enough to take on a life of his own without the guiding hands of the mothers who abandoned him. It was bittersweet as the years went on. 

Regardless, run he did (or rather  _ stumble),  _ down to an old Trans Am with two sleeping Killjoys, hotshots fresh out of Bat City with one warm jacket between them and enough anger to spark a revolution. 

It was not a kind meeting, razorblade smiles and bloody nails, but a concussed boy can only fight for so long before his mind and body give up on him, and only then did the razorblade smiles of the blood stop digging into his skin.

You know, the Phoenix Witch had never really liked the Kobra Kid. He was impulsive, rash, filled with a  _ dark  _ anger she couldn’t even begin to sort through, tainted by his past and refusing to let it go. 

He would learn, in time, she supposed, but at fifteen, huddled into his brother’s blanket with the weight of his past title and the same name as her companions, it burned through his heart, in much the same way at Ativan.

The Kobra Kid never did end up like Ativan, so the Witch did admit it turned out well enough. Whether that was by himself or the people around him, she didn’t need to know. 

The other one, now he was a match. A legend, known throughout the Zones in only a matter of a year, firetruck red hair and blood dripping down from his canines, the same thing, the same ritual;  _ you’re not a Killjoy until you’ve spit blood into the sand, until you’re bled on its grounds and accepted your fate.  _

Party Poison. He gave more and more to the sands than the Witch herself did; a revolution in his name and a promise in the lilt to his voice. More than a hotshot, but not yet enough to cheat death.

Truly, it was no wonder a new age was brought on the night Fun Ghoul, Kobra Kid, and Party Poison met, but that was just the beginning. 

Fun Ghoul was the match, Party Poison was the bomb, Kobra Kid was the gasoline, and Jet Star was the one to set it all ablaze, though the misfit trio of three didn’t meet them until Fun Ghoul was sixteen, and sporting a new pair of matching forearm scars. 

She’d noted that she should never allow him to participate in those derby games that Kobra Kid oh-so-loved. They were both adrenaline junkies, but there was a difference between an adrenaline high and a death wish, and it was impossible for either Fun Ghoul or Kobra Kid to distinguish between the two. 

Either was likely. The pair would prove it time and time again, as the years went on; even when Kobra Kid’s eyes flashed a bright purple and Fun Ghoul stood in the entrance to her domain, pleading,  _ save them, save them, please.  _

Really, none of them had truly needed saving; Jet Star had a bad habit of being the sole survivor of tragedy, wearing it like a badge of war around their heart, caged and trapped in a desert with far too many possibilities. 

They were too paranoid to die, weren’t they? It was true; they were almost as skilled with their escapes as NewsAGoGo, leaving time and time again only to come back within minutes, to save them before the Witch could utter a word to her son about the deals they could make on the lives of his friends, his crew, his  _ revolution.  _

With the amount of bad luck the so-called  _ Fabulous Killjoys  _ had accumulated in their few years, by the time Ghoul was nineteen, it was a wonder they decided to take in a small child of their own, more like a little sister than a daughter. 

She was young, but even the Witch knew she was more than her children would ever be, if they survived long enough to discover it. She was the catalyst to it all; if the Fabulous Killjoys were a wildfire, she was a nuclear bomb. Quite literally. 

At first, she’d met NewsAGoGo, who, after the destruction of Hyper Thrust at the hands of BLI, most notably referred to as  _ Z-5’s worst death disco since Left Hall,  _ had gone underground, a ghost in a network of faces, of everyone and everything.

It was ironic; her own brother didn’t know her to be alive, and yet that infernal poet did. Always the poet. Why did he always get involved in things he should stay out of? 

Really, she should’ve expected him to come into play with the little girl, aptly named The Girl, as well. The Girl was shy, not unlike most children her age in unfamiliar situations, but the poet seemed to bring out the liveliness, the  _ spark,  _ hidden underneath layers of fear behind her chest. 

It didn’t help that the poet and the Kobra Kid seemed to be closer than average, because that made it more difficult to keep track of both the Girl and the Four; with him around, always on her borders, it distorted what she could see of life outside her realm of death.

Therefore, it was no surprise he hung around as often as he could. 

When he did that, she usually visited NewsAGoGo, to see how her daughter’s quest to rebuild an empire was going. It was fine, a situation she appreciated; determination ran through NewsAGoGo’s body like a second skin, after all. 

And then NewsAGoGo decided that the Zones didn’t fit her new palette, in taste or fashion, and that the Lobby needed further rebellion.

The Witch could never see into Battery City. It was where her domain ended, and another began, though she had never met the deity of Battery City in person. 

If only her wife would wake in that sleeping robot, who could go anywhere she wanted. It was a damn shame the slumber was meant to stay, wasn’t it? 

With NewsAGoGo in Battery City, and Fun Ghoul distorted by the aura of the half-dead, half-alive poet, she supposed she would have to wait and see what happened to the Fabulous Killjoys, to the Girl. To  _ her  _ little girl, to her little inferno. 

They weren’t so little now, were they? Killjoys, paying their due to the sands and spitting up revolution like one spat blood into the sand. 

**Author's Note:**

> !!!! tell me what u think !!!


End file.
